Fishes are currently facing novel types of anthropogenic stressors that have never experienced in their evolutionary history, such as ocean acidification. Under these stressful conditions, energetically costly processes, such as reproduction, may be sacrificed for increased chances of survival. This trade-off does not only affect the organism itself but may result in reduced offspring fitness. In the present study, the effects of exposure to high pCO2 levels were tested on the reproductive performance of a temperate species, the two-spotted goby, Gobiusculus flavescens...

A novel capillary electrophoresis-integrated immobilized enzyme reactor (CE-integrated IMER) is developed using single-step in-situ acetylcholinesterase (AChE)-mediated alginate hydrogelation and enzyme encapsulation. Alginate hydrogelation with "egg-box" structure is triggered inside a capillary with releasing of Ca2+ by changing the pH of the sol solution, which is accomplished in-situ by AChE-catalyzed hydrolysis reaction of acetylthiocholine to produce acetic acid. AChE and any other enzyme initially contained in the sol solution [e...

Odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) in insects are essential for mating and oviposition host selection. How these OBPs respond to different hosts at the mRNA level and their effects on behavior remain poorly characterized. The oriental fruit fly Bactrocera dorsalis is a highly invasive agricultural pest with an extremely broad host range and high fecundity. Based on our previously constructed B. dorsalis transcriptome, six OBPs that were differentially expressed during three different physiological adult stages were identified...

Infertility affects ~7% of couples of reproductive age with little change in incidence in the last two decades. ART, as well as other interventions, have made major strides in correcting this condition. However, and in spite of advancements in the field, the age of the female partner remains a main factor for a successful outcome. A better understanding of the final stages of gamete maturation yielding an egg that can sustain embryo development and a pregnancy to term remains a major area for improvement in the field...

Gums are often used to increase the viscosity of the continuous phase of oil-in-water emulsions in order to reduce or inhibit some destabilization processes such as creaming. A new type of xanthan gum, advanced performance xanthan gum, which possesses improved rheological properties, has been used as a stabilizer. The addition of advanced performance xanthan gum to egg protein-based emulsions prepared at different homogenization pressures in Microfluidizer was studied. These emulsions showed different droplet size distributions and flocculation degrees...

Multiplex serological immunoassays, such as implemented on microarray or microsphere-based platforms, provide greater information content and higher throughput, while lowering the cost and blood volume required. These features are particularly attractive in pediatric food allergy testing to facilitate high throughput multi-allergen analysis from finger- or heel-stick collected blood. However, the miniaturization and microfluidics necessary for creating multiplex assays make them highly susceptible to the "matrix effect" caused by interference from non-target agents in serum and other biofluids...

Listeriolysin O (LLO), one of the most immunogenic proteins of Listeria monocytogenes and its main virulence factor, mediates bacterial escape from the phagosome of infected cell. Thus, its expression in non-pathogenic bacterial host may enable effective delivery of heterologous antigens to the host cell cytosol and lead to their processing predominantly through the cytosolic MHC class I presentation pathway. The aim of this project was to characterize a delivery of a model antigen, chicken egg ovalbumin (OVA) to the cytosol of dendritic cells by recombinant Bacillus subtilis vegetative cells expressing LLO...

Social insects are well known for their extremely rich chemical communication, yet their sex pheromones remain poorly studied. In the thermophilic and thelytokous ant, Cataglyphis cursor, we analyzed the cuticular hydrocarbon profiles and Dufour's gland contents of queens of different age and reproductive status (sexually immature gynes, sexually mature gynes, mated and egg-laying queens) and of workers. Random forest classification analyses showed that the four groups of individuals were well separated for both chemical sources, except mature gynes that clustered with queens for cuticular hydrocarbons and with immature gynes for Dufour's gland secretions...

Protein evolution is driven by the sum of different physiochemical and genetic processes that usually results in strong purifying selection to maintain biochemical functions. However, proteins that are part of systems under arms race dynamics often evolve at unparalleled rates that can produce atypical biochemical properties. In the marine mollusk abalone, lysin and vitelline envelope receptor for lysin (VERL) are a pair of rapidly coevolving proteins that are essential for species-specific interactions between sperm and egg...

Selection for cold tolerance in chickens is important for improving production performance and animal welfare. The identification of chicken breeds with higher cold tolerance and production performance will help to target candidates for the selection. The thyroid gland plays important roles in thermal adaptation, and its function is influenced by breed differences and transcriptional plasticity, both of which remain largely unknown in the chicken thyroid transcriptome. In this study, we subjected Bashang Long-tail (BS) and Rhode Island Red (RIR) chickens to either cold or warm environments for 21 weeks and investigated egg production performance, body weight changes, serum thyroid hormone concentrations, and thyroid gland transcriptome profiles...

Breakdown of the basement membrane is a key step that precedes tumor invasion, and accumulating evidence suggests a key role for the type II transmembrane proteases (TTSPs) in that process. Overexpression of a TTSP hepsin characterizes many solid cancers, including prostate, breast, and ovarian cancer, and in experimental tumor models, the elevated proteolytic activity of hepsin simultaneously activates several growth factors and cleaves basement membrane protein laminin-332, which is an essential component of the cell-basement membrane junction hemidesmosome...

A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system with a 45 mm variable temperature (VT) sample probe (VT-NMR-MRI) was developed as an innovative technique for in situ monitoring of food phase transition. The system was designed to allow for dual deployment either in a freezing (-37 oC) or a high temperature (150 oC). The major breakthrough of the developed VT-NMR-MRI system is that it is able to measure the water states simultaneously in situ during food processing. The performance of the VT-NMR-MRI system was evaluated by measuring the phase transition for salmon flesh and hen egg samples...

A wide range of compounds can be formed during thermal processing of food, some of which are relevant for aroma (e.g., furfural), while others are of great health concern (e.g., furan). This paper presents the study of formulation as affecting the simultaneous generation of furan and furfural, along with other aroma quality markers, in sponge cake by means of headspace trap/GC-MS. Ingredients were screened according to their category (fat, salt, sugar, egg-based). Glucose-containing formulation resulted in the highest content of furan and furfural (12...

Allergen analysis is central to implementing and monitoring food allergen risk assessment and management processes by the food industry, but current methods for the determination of allergens in foods give highly variable results. The European Union-funded "Integrated Approaches to Food Allergen and Allergy Risk Management" (iFAAM) project has been working to address gaps in knowledge regarding food allergen management and analysis, including the development of novel MS and immuno-based allergen determination methods...

Food allergy is a growing public health concern, with many individuals reporting allergies to multiple food sources. Compliance with food labeling regulations and prevention of inadvertent cross-contact in manufacturing requires the use of reliable methods for the detection and quantitation of allergens in processed foods. In this work, a novel liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry multiple-reaction monitoring method for multiallergen detection and quantitation of egg, milk, and peanut was developed and evaluated in an allergen-incurred baked sugar cookie matrix...

A cation exchange matrix with zwitterionic and multimodal properties was synthesized by a simple reaction sequence coupling sulfanilic acid to a chitosan based support. The novel chromatographic matrix was physico-chemically characterized by ss-NMR and ζ potential, and its chromatographic performance was evaluated for lysozyme purification from diluted egg white. The maximum adsorption capacity, calculated according to Langmuir adsorption isotherm, was 50.07 ± 1.47 mg g-1 while the dissociation constant was 0...

Hematopoiesis in Drosophila melanogaster occurs throughout the entire life cycle, from the embryo to adulthood. The healthy lymph gland, as a hematopoietic organ during the larval stage, can give rise to two mature types of hemocytes, plasmatocytes and crystal cells, which persist into the pupal and adult stages. Homeostasis of the lymph gland is tightly controlled by a series of conserved factors and signaling pathways, which also play key roles in mammalian hematopoiesis. Thus, revealing the hematopoietic mechanisms in Drosophila will advance our understanding of hematopoietic stem cells and their niche as well as leukemia in mammals...

Schistosomiasis is a major neglected tropical disease (NTD) and considered the most important of the human helminthiases in terms of morbidity and mortality. Whereas treatment with praziquantel has been effective since the 1980s, the potential for the emergence of drug resistance has propelled the search for new interventions. Studies have revealed key roles of proteases in parasitic helminths during establishment of infection, tissue invasion, immune evasion, parasite feeding and development throughout the different developmental stages, pinpointing them as possible candidates...